A method for detecting an asperity in a non-data parking zone of a disk in a hard disk drive. The method includes the steps of moving the heads of the disk drive adjacent to the parking zones of the disks, and then detecting asperities in the parking zones with a thermal asperity detection circuit.
Legal claims defining the scope of protection, as filed with the USPTO.
1. A hard disk drive, comprising: a disk that has a parking zone; a spindle motor that rotates said disk; a head that is coupled to said disk; an actuator arm that is coupled to said head; a voice coil motor that is coupled to said actuator arm and can be activated to move said head relative to said disk; a thermal asperity detection circuit that is coupled to said head and can detect an asperity on said disk; a controller that is coupled to said voice coil motor and said thermal asperity detection circuit, said controller causes said voice coil motor to move said head into and across said entire parking zone so that said thermal asperity detection circuit can detect an asperity in the parking zone.
2. The disk drive of claim 1 , wherein said controller causes said voice coil motor to move said head across said parking zone in accordance with a seek routine.
3. The disk drive of claim 1 , wherein a detection of an asperity is stored in memory.
4. The disk drive of claim 3 , wherein a location of an asperity is stored in memory.
5. The disk drive of claim 1 , wherein said thermal asperity detection circuit includes a threshold detector.
6. The disk drive of claim 5 , wherein said thermal asperity detection circuit includes a compensation circuit.
7. The disk drive of claim 1 , wherein said head includes a magneto-resistive read element.
8. A method for detecting an asperity in a parking zone of a disk located within a hard disk drive, comprising: rotating a disk that has a parking zone; moving a head to the parking zone, said head providing a signal; and detecting an asperity in the parking zone from the signal provided by the head while moving the head across the entire parking zone.
9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the signal is compared with a threshold value to determine the asperity.
10. The method of claim 8 , wherein the head is moved across the parking zone in accordance with a seek routine.
11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the detection of the asperity is stored in memory.
12. The disk drive of claim 11 , wherein a location of the asperity is stored in memory.
13. A circuit for a hard disk drive that has a head which is coupled to a disk, the disk has a parking zone, the head provides a signal, comprising: a controller that can move the head to and across the entire parking zone of the disk; and, a thermal asperity detection circuit that receives the signal from the head and can detect an asperity in the parking zone.
14. The circuit of claim 13 , wherein said controller causes the head to move across the parking zone in accordance with a seek routine.
15. The circuit of claim 13 , wherein the detection of the asperity is stored in memory.
16. The circuit of claim 15 , wherein a location of the asperity is stored in memory.
17. The circuit of claim 13 , wherein said thermal asperity detection circuit includes a threshold detector.
18. The circuit of claim 17 , wherein said thermal asperity detection circuit includes a compensation circuit.
Cooperative Patent Classification codes for this invention. Click any code to explore related patents in that topic.
December 6, 2000
September 3, 2002
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